Minerals Technologies Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Minerals Technologies first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Lydia Kopilova, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Gary. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Today's call will be led by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Doug Dietrich and Chief Financial Officer Eric Alda. Following Doug and Eric's prepared remarks, we'll open it up to questions. As a reminder, some of the statements made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Please note the cautionary language about forward-looking statements contained in our earnings release and on the slides. Our SEC filings disclose certain risks and uncertainties, which may cause our actual results to differ materially from this forward-looking statement. Please also note that some of our comments today refer to non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation to gap financial measures can be found in our earnings release and an appendix of this presentation, which I'll post it on our website. Now I'll open it up to Doug.

Doug? Thanks, Lydia. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining. Today, as usual, I'll provide a quick review of our first quarter financials. Then I'll give an update on our outlook for the remainder of 2026, including an overview of the impact that current events are having on our business and the progress we've been making on our growth projects. Eric will then take you through the detailed financials and provide our outlook. After that, we'll open up the call to questions. Before we get into the details, let me start with the headline. We delivered a strong first quarter with broad-based double-digit growth, and we're seeing early proof that our strategic growth investments are paying off. First quarter sales came in at $547 million, up 11% from prior year. Sales growth was broad-based and from both of our segments. We saw an 11% year-over-year increase in our consumer and specialty segment, driven by household and personal care, which grew 16%, and specialty additives, which grew 6%. Our engineered solution segment sales increased 12% over last year, with high-temperature technologies up 8% and environmental and infrastructure up 24%. A portion of this growth is tied to the specific investments we made last year in support of our strategic growth initiatives to expand into higher margin consumer markets and into higher growth geographies. If you recall, we projected that these initiatives would drive $100 million in annualized revenue beginning this year, and this quarter we delivered the first portion of that growth. From a market perspective, we saw small improvements in demand at the start of the year, which then trended stronger in March. The stronger trend has continued here in the second quarter. Operating income was $68 million, excluding special items, up 7% from last year. Earnings per share were $1.38, up 21%, and both operating and free cash flows improved significantly compared to last year. Like most companies, we felt the impact this quarter from the rapidly changing environment caused by the recent geopolitical events, and I'll talk about that more on the next slide. Let's start on the left side of this slide with some points about the impact current events have in the Middle East. Overall, we've avoided any material impact on sales or operations to date. Where we have seen an impact is with higher energy and freight costs, which we are addressing through pricing actions and temporary surcharges. In terms of our operating and sales footprint, we only have a small presence in the region, primarily consisting of refractory sales to Middle East steel producers and a longstanding joint venture in our energy services business. We did encounter some challenges with shipments that were in the Persian Gulf when the conflict started, but we managed to redirect those shipments to ensure delivery to our customers. Our team responded quickly to the changing environment, much as we did last year with tariffs, And I want to thank our employees for their agility and creativity in identifying solutions for our customers. Our biggest current challenges are higher energy prices at our facilities, increased fuel costs for our heavy equipment, and higher transportation and freight costs. Once these impacts became apparent, we implemented price actions, some of which could be implemented quickly and others which will take effect over the next 90 days due to contractual terms. We are, of course, closely monitoring the evolving conditions and are prepared to implement further actions as needed. We've had minimal supply disruptions as a result of the conflict, and I'd like to point out that from a broader supply chain and logistics standpoint, we benefit from the geographically diverse structure of our business and the localization of our operations. We typically produce our products within the same region or country where we sell them. I believe that this operating structure is one of MTI's key differentiators, as it limits the impact that global supply chain disruptions have on us. This structure will further demonstrate its value as the trend for locally produced minerals and mineral-based products increases. Now let me turn to the right side of the slide to update you on our growth projects, the progress we're making, and the associated timing of the expected sales, as well as some market updates. There are a number of positive elements here, all contributing to what we see as strong sales momentum this year. I'll start with our consumer and specialty segment and our household and personal care product line. We've been upgrading and expanding several of our facilities. The catalytic facility expansions that we completed late last year in North America are fully online. We've been ramping up the new business we've secured for them from customers in the US and Canada. In fact, this is a record sales quarter for cat litter, which grew 19% over last year. Our new cat litter facility in China also continues to ramp up and should be fully functional by the second half of the year with new business orders already secured. Last year, we announced a capacity expansion for our natural oil purification facility. We expect to have this fully online late in the second quarter. enabling us to meet the rapidly growing demand we are seeing for renewable fuels, specifically sustainable aviation fuel. Our high performing products are uniquely capable of meeting the challenging specification for these applications. This quarter sales of these products grew 14% over last year and we expect this pace to accelerate once the expansion is fully operational. Elsewhere in our specialties business, our animal health business is trending nicely with sales up 9% over last year, and we're anticipating strong volume growth in fabric care starting in the second half with the introduction of a new technology. Our specialty additives product line, we previously announced the ramp up of several new satellites in our paper and packaging business, as well as capacity expansions at others, all of which remain on track for the second half of this year. One area where we've not seen much improvement is in the North America residential construction market, which remains relatively slow. Turning to our engineered solution segment and the high-temperature technologies product line, the MINSCAN installations we previously announced all remain on track. We're seeing higher refractory product demand from stronger steel markets in North America, as well as from the share gains we've captured as a result of our MINSCAN installations. Europe steel production, on the other hand, remains soft. Our metal casting business remains stable with no major inflections. We're seeing some strength in municipal foundry applications, and the North America heavy truck market is showing signs of potential recovery, though we continue to see slow demand from the agricultural equipment market. Foundry markets in Asia remain stable, and demand for our engineered foundry blends continues to expand, with sales growing 9% in the first quarter over last year. In environmental and infrastructure, we're seeing the potential beginnings of demand improvement, mainly through environmental lining project activity, which has increased of late. We're also on track for 10 or possibly more new water utility implementations for our Florazorb PFAS remediation product in the second half, and demand for our infrastructure drilling products remains robust in both North America and Europe. Let me summarize all this for you. First, I'm pleased with how our growth investments are performing and we're on track to deliver $100 million of incremental sales. We're off to a strong start to the year and we still have several new growth projects ramping up over the next two quarters. In addition, we're seeing improving trends in many of our end markets. At the same time, we're mindful of continued macro uncertainty, particularly around energy costs. But even with that backdrop, the momentum we've established from these well-timed investments and the positions we've established in durable and growing end markets puts us on track for a solid growth year. Our current projection is for mid-single-digit sales growth in 2026, and this could inflect higher if the market strength we are currently seeing continues. Now let me turn the call over to Eric, who can take you through our financials and provide more details. Eric?